Thittato

2 x 45 min meditation today. Both were in the equanimity landscape.

30th session of kayaking this year Yeah! So now I'm done with kayaking for this season (unless some of my friends really want to go for a session, but I'm usually the one who takes the initiative for that so most likely it won't happen, and at least I'm done with my goal regarding this season). I also started the day with 45 min meditation, which was really nice. I'm getting to a point of really deep relaxation these days, where all my tensions seems to melt away, and I'm just surrendering into the present moment. Seems so healthy, and necessary, these days, to have access to rest like that.

45 min meditation today as well. Shifting from "just sitting" technique into vipassana noting technique. This tend to stirr up much more energy, and is a more proactive meditation. Basically letting my sensory experience dissolve into tingling sensations and vibrations. These sensations gradually unite into a whole which becomes pretty pleasant, and then one just continues to refine and refine this experience by seeing that no experience is permanent, everything is constantly moving. Just looking into the vibratory quality of every sensation in the field of experience. The mind becomes more and more still and united this way, and my being is filled up with peace and joy. Pretty cool.

45 min meditation yesterday, and 45 min meditation today. So nice :-)

45 min meditation today as well. So nice and refreshing. Besides that I'm obsessing over how good it is to be without cannabis for this (to begin with) 30 day break. 13th day without today. This has basically been a 2 year period where I have gradually gotten more and more into cannabis. I didn't really like it before that, because it triggerd so much anxiety in me, so I was mostly staying away, but then I became interested in becoming friends with it, and learn to relax this anxiety, and actually, through ganja yoga and the music jams I've participated in while high, I think my use has been therapeutic. But I have also gotten addicted. So now I'm pulling out of it again, reaping the benefits I could get from it without getting burned. I like the fact that I'm a very experimental person but also very responsible at the same time. Fortunately being experimental doesn't necessarily make you destructive.

45 min meditation this morning. So refreshing. I was pretty tired when I woke up today. So much going on at my job. But now I feel refreshed before going up there in a few minutes. Two things not directly related to meditation: I'm just so glad I'm done with cannabis for this time. It feels so relieving. Oh my gosh. Cannabis can become such a huuuuuuuuge trap. I can now safely say I have experienced what that is about, even though I can easily integrate this chapter into something medicinal and related to self-development. And I think I'm soon done with paddling for this season. No winter-paddling for me at this point. I've paddled 29 good sessions this season, and 20 good sessions last season, so only one more session and I have 50 session in total and I think that is enough for this time. At least after that I can relax and just let those sessions come to me instead of it being something I'm pursuing. I feel like now I want to pursue something else when it comes to physical exercise. Perhaps climbing, because that is something I've been really wanting to get back into.

29th session of kayaking this year (and 10 days without cannabis now) Went paddling for 4,5 hours this morning. Got to watch the sunrise out on the ocean, and then I paddled to an island with a lighthouse on and had breakfast. This is a pretty long paddle. I needed something to unwind from the 3 night-shifts I worked this weekend. It has been really crazy at our job lately. So it was good to do a long and solid paddle. I'm working evening-shift again this evening. When I go and experience something like this it feels like I have been longer away from my job than I have so it feels like there has been more space to process things in-between shifts. Also exercise really helps to process stuff. Exercise and nature. I also quit cannabis 10 days ago. I have gotten addicted I realize. Last time when I wrote here about taking a break. I think it was December/January. I was going to take a break for 30 days. I only managed 20 days. I also tried to take a 30 days break this summer. It lasted for 14 days. This time it also starts as a 30 day break, but I don't think I can go back to it. It has been a medicine for me. And it has been great to use it for Ganja Yoga and music jams. But yeah, it is very addictive. And it also makes me lazy. Life is demanding and I need to be at the top of my game. But I think I can weave my cannabis use these last two years into a good story about my self-development. It has been useful and very nice. But enough is enough. I will probably write something more about it here as I process my use and try to integrate it into a useful story. Anyways. So paddling out to this lighthouse was also kind of a nice celebration of my first 10 days sober from this thing. It seems like cannabis really started making me lazy this last period, and now without it it seems like I naturally gravitate much more towards physical activity again.

Cold shower, 1,5 hour mantra-singing with my mantra-group, and then when I came home from that I did 25 min yin yoga before I went to work night-shift. Such an awesome day :-)

25 min yin yoga and a cold shower today as well. Very nice :-)

Same today. Cold shower and 25 min yin yoga. So nice :-)

A cold shower today as well, and later in the day 25 min of yin yoga. Nice :-)

28th session of kayaking this year 2 cold showers today, and 4 hours of kayaking together with a buddy. Very, very nice :-D I love to see how comfortable my buddy is getting with kayaking. He was unusually scared of it to begin with when we started last year, and it was hard to get him to join, even though he always continued to talk about it as if he was very invested in it, but at the same time he had some strong resistance so it was hard to get him to actually join, but now he is getting super-comfortable.

2 sessions of cold showers today. So nice. Even though I have not written here much lately, and not really done much other practice really, except these cold showers, I still always end my shower with a cold one. Sometimes they are more conscious than others. This last one today was a really good and conscious one.

27th session of kayaking this year Ah! So nice. 2 hours today. Been a while since last time.

20 min vinyasa flow this morning, and a cold shower. Nice :-)

Thanks for having this very interesting discussion! :-)

30 min yoga yesterday, and a few really good cold showers these last days. Feels like I'm starting to get my appetite for practice back again. The 9 day ayahuasca retreat I did was very intense, and we also did a lot of yoga, dance, singing and meditation while I was there. It was like a combined ayahuasca and yoga festival. I also got into a lot of processes that took some time to land as I came home, so I've been pretty tired. But now it seems like my energy is back, and I experience really great flow at work. So much fun and creativity together with my co-workers. Seems like I've cleared out a lot of shit, which gives me increased capacity for presence and improvisation.

Wow, what a day. My step-brother, which I have known for 25-26 years, and that I grew up together with, passed away 1,5 week ago. Today was his funeral. I was there with my dad and my brother and my stepmom and my other 3 step-siblings. They were 4 siblings alltogether. He was the youngest of them. When I was 12 my father suddenly met my stepmother, and all of a sudden me and my brother had 4 more sibblings. It wasn’t unproblematic to suddenly become merged, or maybe more correctly - smashed together with another group of siblings, and actually all of us have struggled in life, but now most of us are starting to do well and settle down and land and find outselves etc. But not my youngest step-brother. He was a long-term drug-addict who suddenly and with no obvious explanation died in rehab without any fight while he was sleeping. The most likely explanation is that he had a relapse on some very strong painkillers because he had trouble sleeping, and he wanted some real solid rest, but because he had been clean for some months he miscalculated the dose and took way too much. Probably something he would have been used to before, but not anymore. Yeah, basically an unintentional overdose. It was so sad. He was such a likeable and charming guy. Strangely enough I mostly just feel that I really appreciated him, and at that same time that I’m willing to let him go and that he will stay in my heart as a good memory. I never saw him struggle. He was always in a good and uplifting mood. Always cracking a joke. But his life was a mess, and his life-strategy of surviving on his charm and his ability to talk himself out of situations couldn’t help him much these last years as he had been getting involved in a seriously destructive relationship. Crazy shit like episodes where her former ex would crash into him with a car so he had to go to the hospital. And it seems like the dynamic was that she was playing them both and putting them up against each other. Or another episode where she would stab him with a knife, or throw him out in the middle of the night several times, or call the police on him because she was crazy and attacking him and he had to hold her arms to avoid her acting out violent shit. They were both doing amphetamin frequently. And he was the nice guy always chasing her love, trying to get her in a good mood, walking on egg-shells around her. She was the really bad borderline personaly disorder person. Worse than Amber Heard. And he tried to save her, which he was totally hooked on, because when things were good between them, things were soooo good. And his mother saw him suffer really badly because of this. He was really trapped in this situation. Something makes me think that he just really deserves to rest in peace now. And my father and my step-mother, and his father, also deserves to rest now after all they have tried to do for him, and all the worries they’ve had. And I will remember him in my heart for his good energy. It is strange with those troubled persons who always has that charm and positivity about them, and who always sees the people around them and who are always available to talk deeply or humorisly about things. Very strange, paradoxical nature this type of persons. Mostly it was just good to be together with my family today. I cried sometimes here and there, and it was sad, but also something about getting a deeper feeling of being in family with all these people that really care about me and that I have known for so long really touched me deeply. The funeral ceremony was really beautiful, and I think I could somehow appriciate the beauty of the extreme vulnerability and nakedness in human life. It was very brutal seeing a mother and a father who had lost their child crying in front of the coffin. And it made me crack up as well. But I could appriciate this climax of the grief as a formal good-bye necessery for moving on.

26th session of kayaking this year Night-paddling with a buddy yesterday. Pretty nice, but we were going to try to have a guitar-jam in the kayaks out at the ocean, and it wasn't so successful. Uncomfortable to play guitar in the kayak, and uncomfortable to paddle with them in the kayaks. But it was fun anyways, and we had a really nice jam by a fire a place we stopped. Not so much journaling here lately. I've been very tired lately. Much processing to do after I came home from the ayahuasca retreat. Not much practice either, except I've been playing a lot of music. The ayahuasca retreat was intensly inspiring regarding that.

25th session of kayaking this year Kayaking with two friends today. 5 hours. A really nice trip. One of these friends I had almost given up on regarding kayaking. He was afraid of something I couldn't understand, but now suddenly he has totally "catched fire" regarding kayaking. So strange in a way. When I gave up on trying to create a group of friends who goes kayaking together, suddenly that group came to me. But not to make this into too much mystical schmystical, I guess I did something right when it comes to inspiring people to get into something I find valuable. Something about being very enthusiastic about something, but at the same time learning to let go of pushing people. Accepting that people will come at their own pace if they find it valuable. And not having any investment in whether they find it valuable or not. AND, I needed to exhaust my own obsession with this before I was able to be this relaxed about it. Basically I just hope this will happen in all areas of my life, and it seems like it is, because I need to become a much more spacious and relaxed dude who is much less pre-occupied with my own agenda. But at the same time I'm really glad I have the ability to just really express and exhaust these energies when I have to, because it always seems to lead to a better place. I just needed to go out there and be really wild about kayaking, and now I can be, eh.... less wild... haha.....

Spa with saunas, warm baths, and 2 cold baths today, together with a good friend who is also from the same ayahuasca community as myself. It was really nice to talk about my newest experiences with him. Basically it is a bit strange that none of us are so die-hard devotees of this anymore like we used to be. It is just one of many things that gives life richness and meaning, but not the main-thing. We concluded with that everyday life is what it is about now. None of us suffer as much as we did when we first started with this, so there is no need to seek refuge in an ayahuasca church the same way we used to. We are strong enough for life now. There is some sadness in this, but also a lot of joy and a feeling that life has moved on in a very positive direction.

24th session of kayaking this year Managed to get 4 friends to join me for todays kayaking-journey. So nice to be a larger group of friends :-) Now I feel integrated back into society again after the ayahuasca retreat, and I'm ready for a weekend of working night-shifts starting tomorrow.

Haha! Thanks! "Psychedelic horn of the gods" Best description ever! :-) We actually had a jam-session a few weeks ago where all of us smoked cannabis, and one of the guys held the didgeridoo for me over his head like a ramp up into the sky, so that I could blow through it from the lowest end. One of the clouds turned into some kind of psychedelic face that I was totally getting absorbed into to the point I forgot I was playing the dideridoo or where I was. It was pretty spectacular :-)

Back home again after participating in a beautiful ayahuasca retreat 1 hour beach yoga today. So nice! This is my first day back in my hometown again after spending 9 days at this retreat center where I participated in something which was a combinded yoga retreat and ayahuasca festival. I still haven't quite landed from that experience, but we did 3 full ayahuasca ceremonies. One on wednesday, one on saturday and one on sunday. It was very nice to connect with this group again. So much I could have said about this, but I find it hard to find the words right now. I started drinking ayahuasca with this group New Years Eve leading into 2011, and I've had something between 20 and 30 ceremonies now. The first ceremony we did this time is the first time ever that I have been throwing up while drinking this medicine. Which is kind of interesting because throwing up is what everybody associates with ayahuasca. Well, anyways, it was so good to finally throw up. It was a huuuuuge thing as well, and I felt soooo relieved afterwards. I also witnessed two children getting baptized during these ceremonies. Like seriously. One on wednesday, and one on sunday. Wow. That was so profound. I'm almost starting to cry just thinking about it. It is one of the most beautiful things I've ever experienced. A beautiful woman that almost looked like an elf played the harp on sunday while the second child got baptized. Holy smokes. And I was totally blasted on this plant medicine. It is hard to describe all these experiences. But I can only say they were very profound. And now I'm integrating back into society again. Glad I'm having a few days off before I go back to work again. Today I've been jamming and connecting with some friends, and I certainly need to get my feet planted back into this material world again before I go back to work, so tomorrow I'll first do some jamming again with friends, and then we are 4 people who are going out kayaking together, so that will certainly help.

23rd session of kayaking this year So I’m at an Ayahuasca retreat in, and I arrived early, so a guy here borrowed me a kayak and I paddled a beautiful lake that this retreat center is just right next to. Wow. Such a beautiful way to become familiar with the spirit of this place. Looking forward to the up-comming days. I’ll stay here for a week and we’ll have 3 ayahusca sessions and lots of yoga and other supportive tools. Great start with this kayak exploration <3